Eating Meat

Eating Meat

The 17th Karmapa (a major leader in Tibetan Buddhism) gave a talk on vegetarianism and I read a copy of the transcript. I was struck by the story of a man who used to kill a pig every morning and then sell the meat through the day. However, one morning the monks at the nearby temple did not ring the morning bell and so the man slept late and by the time he got to the pig it had had ten little piglets. The man went to see the monk and asked him why he hadn't rung the bell. The monk said that he had had a dream that night where ten beings came to him and begged him to spare their life. The monk asked them what he could do to save them and they answered that he shouldn't ring the bell the next morning and so the monk said he would not. When the man heard that he paused to think and finally decided to not kill pigs any more.

As described previously it is important to appreciate all the things that came before in order to make life sweeter. However, with eating meat that means also coming to terms with the killing of animals to provide the meat which you eat. While this is equally true with eating of plants (as discussed previously), it is much easier for people to accept that plants are being killed to provide us with food. This is probably because while plants are our relatives (being about billionth cousins and almost a billion times removed), the meat you eat is practically your brother or sister (being a multi-millionth cousin and about a million times removed) and people empathize much more easily with animals than plants. They are more bothered by the killing of animals than plants.

I myself try to come to terms with the killing of animals. While the death of a steer is not very pleasant (I imagine), it is also not that long. I helped my cousin, Martin, who raises beef cattle, for a few weeks and took a few pictures and short videos which you can see. What I came to appreciate is that cattle have a pretty OK life as cattle. I myself would not like being a steer (with my human tendencies), but cattle are raised in an environment which they are comfortable with. One of the things cattle hate most is being singled out away from the herd and so they hate going through the chutes where they can be grabbed and held to be treated with shots and such. However, in a steer's life of one to two years, he spends about half an hour in chutes getting shots and such and, finally, killed.

I expect that in my roughly eighty years of life I will spend more than forty hours dreading shots and such (I really don't like shots), but that is hardly such a big factor in my whole life. I wouldn't trade all the joys of my life to eliminate those hours of dread or the minutes of actual shots and giving blood samples. But with beef cattle that is the only real alternative. We care for and feed beef cattle for their meat and if no one ate meat there likely would be many fewer cattle. To imagine that they could be just left to run free and wild is not realistic as we live in a finite world which can only support so many plants and animals (as discussed previously).

If I am going to celebrate the lives of the plants and animals which died to feed me, I still need to come to terms with their killing, though. For that I remember when I helped to put down the dog, Stein, which had been my childhood companion. While I didn't actually give the fatal shot which killed Stein, my brother and I held him while the Vet gave the shot and Stein finally died. I imagine that Stein's passing was much easier as he was surrounded and comforted by family members. I justified it because Stein was quite old and seemed to be suffering greatly from arthritis. It seemed the kindest thing to do....

So, when I eat meat, I imagine the terror that the steer must have felt in those last minutes (pretty similar to my irrational childhood fear of shots) and imagine myself touching and calming the steer so that its death is more calm and peaceful. Ultimately I imagine myself killing the steer by placing the bolt gun against the steer's head and pulling the trigger with love and compassion¹. This is a most challenging exercise for me, but in order to celebrate the lives of the food which I eat I need to come to terms with their deaths.

Of course there are other factors to consider with respect to eating meat. One is being kind to my body, which, after all, is a community of many trillions of living cells which depend on me for their well being. My reading of current studies suggests that people are most healthy if they eat a diet of mostly grains, fruits, and vegetables but with some meat and dairy products. So, I eat some meat, but not very much for that reason alone.

Another factor which is less clear to me is whether the world would be a better place with less cattle, pigs, and chickens and more people. I am not very sure of that and so that suggests I should continue to eat meat for now. However, if the Chinese and Indians follow us with increased meat consumption with their increasing prosperity, that could cause serious problems. That could drive up grain prices (to feed the meat animals) such that poorer people (perhaps in Africa and South America) can no longer afford grain to eat and so are forced to starve. In that case, I might be inclined to eat less meat (though for me that wouldn't make much difference) as starving doesn't seem a very kind end of life. What to do?

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This page was last updated on May 8, 2007